Portrait

My paternal great-grandparents, who were legal U.S. residents, emigrated back to their native México during the Great Depression. Their son, my Abuelo (grandfather) who was born in San Antonio, became a U.S. immigrant to México at seventeen. Time passed and fate would again intervene when my father, a chronic asthmatic learned of a place where he could live […]

Shōjo manga (girls’ comics) has been seminal to the genre as a whole and especially formative for Japanese girls’ culture throughout the postwar era. Shōjo Heart is a metaphor from Shōjo manga. It means people’s feelings and thoughts straight from the heart. Currently, there are more and more Chinese students who come to the US […]

I was placed in this life with the mother I have, and that’s the way it is. Shortly after my family and I moved to the Phoenix area in the early 2000’s, my mother was in a horrific car crash. Through a very difficult recovery, she picked up a drug habit that lead to my […]

In December of my first semester as a photography MFA student at ASU, I drove into Globe, after dark, with a failed alternator. I was met, repeatedly, with unusual generosity. This led me to begin a series of portraits and landscapes in Miami-Globe, northeast of Phoenix. Miami and Globe were built on mineral wealth; silver, […]

I remember the summers of early childhood with my mother. The sounds of the Cure and Prince still bring back memories of seeing her get ready for an evening out. I watched her put on makeup, color her hair, and paint her nails with the eyes of a loving and curious daughter who came too […]

Traveling north on Route 87 the views of Tonto National Forest appear pristine and beautiful. Towering saguaros pepper a land that seems to go on endlessly. It wasn’t until I ventured off of the highway onto one of the many dirt roads intersecting Tonto that the pristine landscape revealed a different truth. Gunshots can be […]